The passing of Jobs did not come as a surprise to any who followed the tech news. He had been battling pancreatic cancer, which took a friend of mine in 4 short months, for years. As so often in his life he beat the odds, at least for a time.

So now we eulogize him. That is not inappropriate. He rightly takes his position with such innovators at Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Like both of those men his inventions, or more accurately, his drive to create and bring brilliant minds together to create, transformed our world. When I was in grad school it is true, I was one of the few who used a Mac, a PowerBook 140, but today millions of people use an Apple product. I am not even sure how many iPod devices we have in our house now and almost all of the deans at my university are now using iPads. While the Macintosh operating system made computing far simpler than ever before, opening up its use to the masses of simple folks like myself who didn’t want to know command lines and coding language, the iOS devices have transformed how we interact with the world, do research, consume and produce media and content. It is really impossible to underestimate the impact this one man has had on the world in terms of commerce, culture, education, and … well, in just about every way you can imagine.

But like Ford and Edison Jobs was not a man without his shortcomings. Others will no doubt catalogue such shortcomings, but he was notorious for being prickly to the point of being abusive. When he first started Apple even those closest to him said that he was not fit to be a CEO. In an NPR story last month Sculley, whom Jobs had chosen to become CEO of Apple in 1983, stated that he greatly regretted removing Jobs from their board and leading to Jobs leaving Apple. Yet it was also what Jobs needed in order to become the great CEO that we know remember and celebrate. Jobs’ business practices have been vaguely criticized by many over the years. His passion for secrecy is legend as was his supposed ability to create a “reality distortion field” that kept the masses buying whatever it was he was selling.

He certainly thought differently, jettisoning the floppy drive and making machines in outrageous colors when beige and ports was what computers were all about. As Gateway’s retails stores were dragging that company down into the financial abyss he took Apple into the heart of retail. And into a market cluttered with devices he launched the iPhone so successfully that every smart phone is now compared with it. He and his company may not have created out of whole clothe any specific device they sold, they transformed them all such that the whole was more than the sum of its parts (plus a healthy profit margin).

Steve Jobs has left an incredible legacy, one we will be studying for years to come. At his core though he was a great visionary and a normal human. He had foibles, problems, and shortcomings. He was not the messiah nor the anti-Christ, but like all of us he had the potential to be a bit of both.

Oh, and he changed the world.

 

Steve Jobs profile in New York magazine – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Steve Jobs profile in New York magazine
Posted Jun 18th 2007 10:00AM by Michael Rose

Never the advocate of subtle promotion, New York magazine’s cover story this week bears a simple headline over a psychedelic picture of Steve Jobs: iGod. John Heilemann’s story takes a humorous and surprisingly intimate look at the nigh-mythological arc of Jobs’ career, including the most common epithet applied to him by colleagues and friends alike (hint: it’s anatomical), and quotes like this one from Jean-Louis Gassée describing Jobs’ RDF as almost a physical force: “[Jobs is] the most powerful person I’ve ever met. The word charisma-in the true, Greek sense-applies. He has the power to open up your chest and put his fingers inside you.” Um, okay, Jean-Louis, does ‘blech’ translate to French?

 

Filed under: Education, Odds and ends, Steve Jobs

Well having annoyed a lot of folks with his recent missive on DRM, Uncle Steve seemed likely to be making more enemies on Friday at a conference in Texas about K-12 education reform where he appeared along with Michael Dell. The AP reports that Jobs said, “I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.” Being in higher education, I see the results of our K-12 education on a daily basis, and it’s clear that there’s a problem. One interesting thing about this, whether you ultimately agree with Jobs or not, is that he felt free to say it. Jobs even allowed, “Apple just lost some business in this state, I’m sure,” though the AP noted that “the audience applauded enthusiastically” several times. It is perhaps not surprising that Dell “sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap” while Jobs was being his charismatic self.

[Via NSLog();]

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

As usual Time magazine seems to have gotten a bit of a sneak peak of a hot new Apple product. In this nice writeup, Lev Grossman discusses some of the background behind the iPhone. Uncle Steve was apparently up to form during the discussions about the iPhone. Grossman notes that “Jobs trash-talked the Treo, the BlackJack, the Sony PSP and the Sony Mylo (“just garbage compared to this”), Windows Vista (“It’s just a copy of an old version of Mac OSX”) and of course Microsoft’s would-be iPod killer, Zune.”

This welcome article nicely fills out the story of the iPhone a bit.

 

Filed under: Macworld, Analysis / Opinion, Cult of Mac, Surveys and Polls, iPhone

I thought online polls where strictly blog territory, but it seems that august publications like the Wall Street Journal are getting in on the poll fun. The WSJ has a poll up right now that asks, ‘Will the iPhone be a hit like the iPod or a flop like the Newton?‘ At the right you see how it stands at 5am EST. 83% of people think Apple has a hit on its hands (my one vote is in that category) whilst 17% said, ‘Didn’t Steve kill the Newton when he returned to Apple? What’s up with Newton 2.0?’

What do you think? Will Apple score big with the iPhone or is it destine to become a footnote in Apple, Inc’s history?

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

MacBreak Weekly taping tonight at 21st Amendment

Upcoming.org: MacBreak Weekly Live @ 21st Amendment at 21st Amendment (Tuesday, January 9, 2007)

Directions to 21A, from Moscone Center

Just a reminder that tonight’s live taping of MacBreak Weekly takes place at 21st Amendment starting at 6pm. If you’re planning to come to the taping, my advice is to get there early, because we’re anticipating a capacity audience (that’s a big reason everyone agreed it was better not to do this event at the Apple Store on Steve Day).

Leo, Alex, Scott, and I will be discussing today’s announcements and may even have some guests.

A propos of nothing, I will also take this opportunity to remind Mr. Bourne of his (often repeated) promise to buy everyone on MBW an iPhone on the day that they come out. Just saying.

If you come out tonight or see me on the Macworld show floor with MacBreak today, please say hi and introduce yourself.

macs & os x, admin, alex lindsay, apple, apple, macs & os x, elsewhere, leo laporte, macbreak appearances, macbreak weekly, macintosh, macworld, merlin mann, mwsf, mwsf07, os x, pixelcorps, podcasts, san francisco, scott bourne, twit.tv

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